An Exploration into Chinese EFL Students' Critical Thinking

When English educators appeal for more efforts to develop college students' critical thinking in English classes, gaining a full understanding how much their critical thinking ability has achieved seems to be an indispensable task. This study applies Critical Thinking Disposition Survey (CTDS) and Critical Thinking Skills Tests (CTST) to measure Chinese EFL students' critical thinking abilities. The results show that those students have weak disposition to think critically-with low passion to pursue truths and facts, little awareness to embrace innovative ideas, and scant confidence to frankly communicate, but show strong inspiration for new knowledge. Meanwhile, they are not proficient in fundamental and advanced levels of critical thinking skills-lack of judgment, application and analysis, but are surprisingly adept in some sub-skills. Probing into the status of their critical thinking in English is of great value for empirical researches into developing their critical thinking, and also for practices of nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship as well.